In 1987, George Michael topped the charts with a little song called "Faith", Ronald Reagan was contemplating retirement, and a movie about 3 men and a baby made 167 Million dollars at the box office. Seriously, look it up. The same year, the State University of New York at Geneseo, John Wiley Jones School of Business unleashed Tracy Klinkroth on the world of marketing. Well, unleashed may be a strong word but they did give her a piece of paper that stated she had gone to class most of the time.

Tracy honed her skills at two boutique research firms in Boston, Massachusetts. Wallace & Washburn conducted primarily consumer research, targeting the consumer packaged goods, finance and health care industries. STAT Resources focused primarily on B2B research in the IT and fire/burglar alarm industries. Tracy consulted for several years in Boston before moving to Seattle in 1995 where she was employed as a Brand Strategist at EvansGroup Advertising (currently Publicis).

Tracy founded Epiphany Research in 1997 and has implemented research projects for brands such as RealNetworks, PlayNetwork, Concur Technologies, Captaris, K2, New Balance, Best Buy, Starbucks, Tully's Coffee, IZZE Sparkling Juice, Nature's Path, McDonald's, Flexcar, Capital One, Washington State Department of Health and American Express Publications.

Epiphany often works with advertising agencies to assist their clients in branding and communications testing because really, wouldn't you like to know ahead of time that your going to get promoted in 6 months after this thing launches? The advertising agencies and design firms Epiphany has worked with include: DDB, McCann, Publicis, Wong Doody, Heckler Associates, DNA Brand Mechanics, Hadley Green, Landor Associates, AvenueA/Razorfish, Design of Today and EXCLAIM.

In an effort to adapt to marketplace changes, Tracy founded ChickChat, a sister company of Epiphany, in 2003. ChickChat was founded with the purpose of conducting in-depth, honest and real opinion research with women. Using ChickChat's nationwide database of savvy, influential female consumers, brands such as UW Medicine, Oregon Chai and Miramax Studios have benefited from the in-home, no-holds-barred discussion group approach of ChickChat. Honesty, as it turns out, is the best policy. How convenient.

Tracy believes in giving back, and regularly volunteers her time at organizations she feels passionately about including: The Humane Society, NARAL, Moveon.org, Powerful Voices and Page Ahead. She has traveled extensively in Europe and Latin America and will be trekking to the Amazon this spring, where, in addition to seeing the sites, will also be volunteering at an orphanage.